Passage de Venus

This film won every award at the 1874 Oscars.

The very first moving picture was of the planet Venus.... taken from a time when we though every planet in the solar system could contain life... the person who filmed this must have wondered if anything was looking back at him from Venus....

This hits hard

the way venus transits across the sun just hits very different nowadays and i can't believe that this was only 5 seconds and deserves to be way longer.

How could anyone (besides an idiot) give this short such a low rating? I'm annoyed at what I'm seeing. This is one of the first attempts at making a film, and you idiots give it a 2? A 3? That is really poor on your part. I'll tell you why.

First of all, where do you think today's movies came from? Did cinema evolve out of nowhere? Of course not! Cinema had to progress. People had to get their ideas, experiment, mess around, whatever. You cannot give this such a low rating! Yes, it's a scratchy mess, and impossible to identify what it's about, but you have to start somewhere. So maybe it's not exactly a great film in itself, but still deserves at least a 7.

The guy who gave it a 10 was really thinking about it. He understood. You cannot criticize it for its scratchiness or anything. The fact it is one of the earliest attempts at filmmaking is enough.

I will admit it's not a true film. As IMDb's summary states, it is merely photographs, and is not 'filmed', per say, on a filmstrip. The first true celluloid film was Louis le Prince's "Roundhay Garden Scene" in 1888, but until then this is an important movie suggesting the beginning of our medium. It is also important because the event it portrays is a once-in-a-lifetime experience that we wouldn't be able to witness today. But, thanks to Pierre Janssen, we can.

I don't believe it can be considered a film in the full sense of the term. The fact that it is probably the oldest fragment of cinema we know of does not make this product definable as a "film." Its entirely scientific and non-entertainment purpose alone would be enough to eliminate any debate. Moreover, there is the fact that this product was not recorded on film but on a series of different photographic plates.

However, it is not possible to overlook the historical importance of this product, nor the influence of the photographic revolver designed by Janssen, which made it possible to capture this event. Nevertheless, both reviews and evaluations should refer to film, not to artifact.

Rating: NC.

To most this may look simply like a home movie. But it's labeled the first movie ever actually made on IMDb. That's no small accomplishment. This 1-2 second movement of Venus across the sun is not only mentally exciting, but also incredibly groundbreaking. I myself cannot confirm if it's actually Venus going across the sun, but if it is, it also showcases an excellent appearance of space movement, which was still in its relative infancy in photography.

I doubt this was actually filmed frame by frame. They could've most likely just took a few photographs on a standstill camera and wrapped them all together to create the illusion of movement. But hey. Isn't that what stop motion is about? So not only is it the first movie ever, the first movie to show the sun looking good, it's also the first stop motion movie ever made. Isn't that incredible?

I probably would've given this a lower rating if it was newer, but since it's the first of it's kind, I think it's well deserving of a 9.